Ugly Americans

As I have mentioned before, food is a pretty big concern for us, and for most people overseas and far from home. When I was younger, I loved sweets. Nowadays, I still like sweets, but overall I tend to gravitate more toward savory foods. In Germany, we were very lucky  (depending on how you look at it) to a) have a great bagel shop across the street from us and b) have a lot of Dunkin Donuts.  Here in Sarajevo, aside from the oddball 'Italian doughnut' booth at a winter market, neither are present. So if you have a craving for one or the other, you really have only one option. DIY.     That was my day yesterday. The end result being we had donuts and bagels, and a house that smelled like a donut shop.    Today has not been that ambitious. It was, for the most part, an ugly grey rainy day where for a brief ten minutes we saw a ray of sun. And then it went away. I did end up making more bagels today (because, bagels ), but not the d...

Blue skies! This was the sky at 1:30 today, at post. Today was pretty awesome. I was outside with the kids in our backyard for about 30 minutes and it was very nice. Right now, the temperature has risen enough that people are burning less or not burning any material, which is part of the air pollution problem here in Sarajevo. It is supposed to be warmer this weekend, which means that hopefully people keep burning less. I have no idea whether this will keep up, if we'll see snow and colder weather, or if the air will once again become opaque. I'm just happy that for now the skies are clear and the air is far clearer than it has been.

For almost all of December, we lived in a cloud of pollution. On most days, a grey wall of smog obscured our view of the houses across the street. On better days, you could kind of see them. It was so bad, the majority of plane flights into and out of Sarajevo were cancelled. All of posts pouch bags were stuck. While only a few of our holiday orders were caught in the delay (because I ordered most of our stuff in advance), and miraculously our pollution masks managed to make it in before the mail cut out (YAY) not everyone was as lucky. Near the end of the month, it finally cleared, and we were able to see the sky. I know. You are probably saying, "Suck it up, because you're not in China" , right? Monday, the reports were that our pollution index here in Sarajevo was over 500, and our MED unit put out an email blast warning us about it. That is China Bad. Tuesday, it was still bad. Today, The smog is back. So you say, "That's why you get three air ...

We are now officially done with 1/4 of our total time at post. It has gone really fast because Sarajevo is in general a pretty nice post. It has been snowing for over a week now, but its not cold enough to keep the snow from melting, so the roads are clear for now. I slept in today, and avoided the morning crises with the children. The kids, for their part, have been fairly reasonable all day. I did not set up the tree today, mainly because the tree is a lot of work and today is not the day for that. The most labor intensive thing I have done today is make the pineapple upside-down cake that is currently baking in the oven. Today is a lazy birthday day,

 There are (as I have mentioned before) both good and bad things about the FSLife. When it comes to the bad stuff, the best thing you can do for yourself, and in our case, the kids and I, is to be prepared for anything. Anything in this case includes a GO Bag, or Bugout Bag. If you are also in the FSLife, you are familiar with this item. You probably learned all about it in seminars for developing your own personal preparedness plan , at post or FSI. If you were somehow horribly unlucky and never got one of those seminars, there are a few links you should probably check out, like the page of information  FLO has put together on how to put your own plan together.   I have been going over my own bag, and I decided to share its contents here, so you can get an idea for what (if you're like me) you might want to put in your own bag. When we started this lovely adventure, the portion of the preparedness plan that covered Go Bags frankly sucked . A lot.** So, we took the ba...

If you are like me, food is a big thing. It is one of those things every other expat I have come across talks about, to no end. I was going to write a more flowery, fancy-pants post on food but frankly my days as of late have been a bit busy with other stuff. So instead, I am going to daisy-chain a bunch of photos taken from the weekend and this week. They all loosely (like the one below this sentence) revolve around getting food here in Sarajevo.   Early morning market run! Sarajevo really has a good variety of fresh vegetables and fruit (and mushrooms!) in its markets. Does it make me sad that my chances of seeing plantains, malanga, or yucca while here are slim to none? A little. But we're not going to starve, and I can still get black beans by mail. Sadly, this is the only photo I took at the local market because I needed my hands free to pick out the fruits and veggies we were buying and storing in our handy-dandy cart. Maybe next visit for the photos. In addition to...

I do not know how Lush managed to distill the essence of every agua de colonia every splashed on a little Hispanic kid during their childhood (fond childhood memory, ha!), but that is pretty much what the Dragon Egg bath bomb is.